As enterprises adopt IoT and vendors expand their product offerings beyond hardware devices and simple communication tools and start thinking of them as environmental sensors, the real value of the combination of UC and IoT will be realized.

Focusing on ROI

As UC platforms move from premise-based servers to cloud services, focus will increase on the endpoint environment to drive return on investment and superior user experiences. ROI will become increasingly evaluated as companies shift with digital transformation, and IoT allows for the evaluation of every aspect of the business, including insight into customer experiences, process monitoring and more.

IoT is shifting the conversation of the benefits of utilizing UC tools from network visibility, employee efficiency and customer experiences to a revenue-generating tool. Analytics that come as a result of the interaction of UC systems and IoT will enable insights to analyze where businesses are optimally performing and identify and explore potential growth and expansion opportunities.

Preparing for the IoT impact

Vendors are taking full advantage of the business opportunity of IoT by enabling everything from simple communication tools used for daily business operations to medical devices to benefit customers and the company’s ability to expand business. As IoT is embedded into nearly every device in the network, enterprises utilizing IoT will have a competitive edge, putting late adopters in a dangerous position to remain relevant in the market.

IoT requires infrastructure upgrades

Currently there are an estimated 26.66 billion connected devices, and it is expected that by 2025, over 75 billion devices will be connected. Obvious questions begin to circulate when an increase of this magnitude is expected, especially in such a short time span. IoT is promising to advance the way we live and work, but fully reaping the benefits won’t come without upgrades to current systems.

The demand is immediate and apparent: network operators must provide reliable, secure and scalable networks to support the number of devices on the network. Service providers, however, aren’t the only ones that need to evaluate their infrastructure. IT network operators will also be responsible for ensuring their environments can support IoT. To meet these network demands, operators will require solutions that enable overall visibility into the health and functionality of the entire network environment to prevent and resolve issues as they look to support the next generation of technology capabilities. 

A lack of preparation and willingness to upgrade infrastructure will automatically place enterprises in line with late adopters, because they will miss the chance to take advantage of increased telemetry and analysis of endpoint devices as IoT impacts today’s enterprise communications.

As enterprises seek the compelling value proposition of IoT, it's important that infrastructure and tools be in place to aggregate data from the many “things” of IoT. As infrastructure upgrades, enhancing overall visibility into the health of the entire environment will also play a key role in taking advantage of IoT, specifically UC solutions, as they are impacted by digital transformation. With data projected to the be the biggest impact of IoT, the first step in the journey of advancing the enterprise should be to evaluate internal systems and to seek out vendors that can make the promises of IoT a reality for your business.